


Familiar

by HoneySempai



Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Alternate Universe - Historical, Bucky Barnes Recovering, Familiar Bucky Barnes, Familiar Steve Rogers, Flowers, Gardens & Gardening, Gift Exchange, Gift Fic, Gift Giving, Herbalism, Language of Flowers, M/M, Magical Creatures, im an amateur medievalist at best, vaguely
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-25
Updated: 2017-12-25
Packaged: 2019-02-16 23:50:40
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,751
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13064766
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HoneySempai/pseuds/HoneySempai
Summary: Familiar [fuh-MIL-yer], noun1. a familiar friend or associate.2. a supernatural spirit, supposed to serve and aid a witch or other individual.Written forKissMissSangBangfor theStucky Secret Santa. Inspired by the song "Wild Honey" because I happened to be listening to this album while thinking about what I'd write. I was also readingthisat the same time, so that’s where the idea of writing a story about familiars came from.





	Familiar

**Author's Note:**

  * For [buckydunpun](https://archiveofourown.org/users/buckydunpun/gifts).



Bucky knows him by the rustle of the leaves. Any other duration and volume of the same sound would send him scrambling to raise his wards, but the weight of Steve pulling on the branch as he swings down into the yard is as familiar and comforting as Bucky’s own heartbeat. 

“You can just walk up to the house like a normal person, y’know?” he teases nonetheless, glancing up from where he’s pumping water into a basin.

“Now is that any way to talk to someone who’s brought you a gift?” Steve asks, waiting for Bucky to gesture him inside. He’s left the window cracked open, an event which occurs once every five thousand years, and Steve doesn’t want to step on the trust Bucky’s decided to show the outside world by climbing in unprompted. 

“When it’s you? Yes.” Bucky signals Steve that it’s okay to come in, and Steve pulls the window open all the way. “Oh come on...”

Bucky gently grabs hold of Steve’s legs as he climbs in feet-first, keeping him steady. If he uses the opportunity to direct them so they end up wrapping around his waist, well, Steve’s certainly not complaining that he makes it safely not only inside the house, but in his beloved’s arms. 

“You’re entirely unnecessary, you know that?” Bucky grumbles, and Steve grins. 

“I’m delightful,” Steve counters, and kisses Bucky before he can argue some more. The kiss remains unbroken even as Bucky sets him down on his feet, and consequently needs to bend down slightly to make up for their height differences. When he’s actively sharing Peggy’s magic Steve is taller and broader than Bucky, but when he's not he appears in his natural state: slight and several inches shorter. 

Bucky’s shrunk down again since his escape, but not as much as Steve. 

“I don’t see how one precludes the other,” Bucky mumbles against Steve’s mouth once he finally—barely—pulls away. 

Steve has no argument for that so he nips Bucky’s lower lip and steps back. “So. Your present.”

“Dishes first.” Steve sticks out his own lower lip in a pout. “How am I supposed to feed you if we’ve got nothing to eat off of?” Bucky parries, nodding at the fireplace where a parsnip soup is warming over a low flame.

“I can eat with my hands,” Steve says, holding them up. 

Bucky takes one and brings the heel of its palm up to kiss. “And I can eat out of them as well?”

“Think you already do.”

Bucky curls Steve’s fingers into a loose fist and makes him hit himself in the temple. “Dishes.”

Steve rolls his eyes and head dramatically, but turns around and heads for the basin he had climbed in over, picking up a linen to dry off each dish and utensil that's handed to him. Tedium aside, it's nice to stand beside Bucky for awhile, elbowing him whenever he gets the chance, and being flicked with water droplets in return. And since only Bucky lives here, and he entertains very few visitors, there aren't many dishes to do, anyway.

Nonetheless, Steve is impatient, and when Bucky says that he's going to check on the soup Steve makes a noise so whiny even Bucky has to laugh and, more importantly, capitulate.

"First," Steve says, instantly brightening. He holds his hands out in front of himself; the star on his chest underneath his shirt glows as he concentrates, and the jar of honey he had left at the guild materializes in his hands. "Fresh collected this morning."

“...Please tell me you conjured that.”

“Well yeah, you just watched me do it.”

“I mean when you collected it.” 

“Now where’s the fun in that?”

" _Steve_. How are you not _covered_ in bee stings?"

Steve waves his hand dismissively, conjuring up a slight breeze that gently tosses Bucky's shoulder-length hair. "A little wind helped me out. And I didn't take much so I wasn't there long."

"You shouldn't have."

"Yes, I should've."

That makes Bucky warm a little; he looks down at the jar, not quite hiding the pink on his cheeks. "Well. Well, thanks, thank you, Steve. I'll...actually, I can use this right now. If I mix it with the cream and add it to the soup..."

Bucky plucks the little jar out of Steve's hands and begins what Steve can only described as "bustling" around the room. As reticent as he is to use his own magic, he lets Steve use his freely, and consequently Bucky's stores of dairy are more plentiful and last longer than those of people who don't benefit from the company of a familiar. Steve watches him ladle cream into the cauldron and then pour a carefully watched amount of honey in after it, stir and taste the resulting mixture, and, by the smile on his face, declare it a success.

"We'll let that warm for a few minutes more, and then it'll be ready," Bucky announces, turning back to Steve with a pleased look.

"That'll give me just enough time to give you your second present," Steve says decisively.

"You're spoilin' me, Steve," Bucky mumbles as he slips into the other chair, and Steve hums nonchalantly so he doesn't have to bring up the fact that it's an important day that deserves commemoration, or say again that he _wants_ to spoil Bucky. He rests his hands on the table, cupped parallel to each other; he squints his eyes shut, the star glows, and between his hands forms a plain but elegantly-shaped vase, filled with small, delicate blue and white blooms.

"They're hyacinths," Steve says. "I thought you'd like them."

For a moment Bucky is struck dumb. Steve's helped him with his garden where he grows the parsnips and onions that are in today's soup, as well as other vegetables and herbs. It was Steve who first planted the "fence" of dill that protects this little patch of earth, three years ago to the day, when Bucky was only newly freed and still nigh unto catatonic. But there are no flowers in his garden. Bucky has found no pressing need, and therefore no room, for them.

"You never have anything that's just nice to have around," Steve says, toying with one of the blooms. "I thought these would brighten up the inside of the house."

"They will," Bucky says, even though his throat feels lumpy and swollen. "Thank, thank you, Steve."

It was three years that Steve spent searching for his abducted lover; it's been another three since he found him, a captive of a sorcery guild calling itself Hydra. They had made Bucky mindless, a puppet whose magic they used to call disaster down on villages that refused to pay the fee for their "protection". Steve had wanted to storm their fortress immediately; only the insistence of his wiccan, Peggy, and fellow-familiar, Angie, had made him wait long enough for aid to arrive. At the end of it all Hydra had been dispersed, rather than outright defeated, but Steve had personally carried Bucky away from the smoldering remains of Hydra's stronghold, and he counts that as the greatest victory he could have had.

And Bucky, for three years, has tended the herbs that go into the potions that let Shield, the wiccan guild that Peggy, Steve, and Angie belong to, continue their work: dill, a good all-purpose ward against evil; aloe and garlic to protect and heal; mint to prevent fatigue; thyme for strength; sage for health. But no flowers. Nothing pretty, or sweet, or cheery. Nothing that would indicate that he had forgiven himself for being kidnapped, chained down and controlled through black magic, made to do things his own good heart would never have allowed him to do if left to its own devices. Nothing that would imply he thought himself worthy of even the smallest self-indulgence or gesture of esteem.

"You deserve 'em," Steve says, through his own lumpy, swollen throat.

Bucky swallows, and gets up suddenly. Steve watches him, the quiet melting from painful to soft, as Bucky sets about putting out the fire underneath the cauldron with dirt from a canister nearby. Steve gets up to fetch two bowls and two spoons, bringing them to Bucky so he can ladle soup into them, but he holds them away from Bucky when he moves to take them.

"Let's eat outside. I have a third present for you."

"Seriously, spoilin' me rotten," Bucky mumbles, more automatic than an actual protest, and he follows Steve out the door and around the side of the house, stepping over the fence of dill so they enter the garden. He makes sure to sit between Steve and the downward path of the sun, so his shadow covers the smaller familiar; Steve's skin is a delicate pale white that he _could_ protect from the sun with magic, but he never thinks to do it, and so Bucky takes it upon himself to shield him in this way. It's the least he can do in return for all Steve's done for him, and he wants to do it, besides.

(He's very proud that it didn't take long for him to remember Steve, after the rescue. He was never so changed as to forget love.)

Steve sets the bowls down on the ground; he holds his hand out for Bucky's, and once he has it he presses both their hands down atop the soil. The star glows again, and from between their fingers springs a vine; it climbs the wall behind them, gaining branches and leaves and blossoms as it grows, filling the air with a gentle sweet smell. Bucky finally laughs, a choked but happy sound, when one of the ancillary vines quite purposely droops to wrap around his wrist, forming a loose bracelet, an easily escapable shackle. Steve smiles, and brings this hand up, to kiss the back of it.

" _This_ is the only thing that will hold you ever again," Steve says, quiet, fervent, looking up into Bucky's eyes so Bucky can read his own. Even if Bucky eventually decides to join the guild, to officially bond with Peggy as her familiar, to put himself directly in the path of danger again, he will remain free. His mind, his actions, his choices will remain his own. Steve will make sure of it.

Bucky leans forward, tilting his head down, pressing a kiss to Steve's forehead that tells him that he understands, and, for this moment at least, believes.

"Yes, you are."

**Author's Note:**

> For clarification's sake, this story uses the term "wiccan" to denote a good witch and "sorcerer" to denote a bad witch. Witches are magical humans; familiars are humanoid nature spirits who can bond with (or be forcibly bound to) a witch, thereby increasing the magical capacity of both. 
> 
> When witches reach maturity they perform a ceremony wherein a sigil is revealed to them burned onto a round piece of wood. Familiars bearing the same sigil on their bodies are compatible with this witch. Witches can bond with incompatible familiars, but it's difficult and painful for the familiar, and so this is generally only done by sorcerers who, by definition, are malicious. Peggy's sigil is, obviously, a star; I figure Steve's got a star on his chest, Bucky's got a star on his arm, and Angie, with her dreams of stardom, would have one on her forehead. (Peggy found and bonded with Angie first, and the pair of them met Steve while he was searching for Bucky.)
> 
> Flower symbolism:  
> White Hyacinth - Loveliness; praying for you  
> Blue Hyacinth - Constancy in love  
> Honeysuckle - Bonds of love


End file.
